


night follows day

by sweetestsight



Series: parallax [1]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: M/M, Solarpunk AU, a wee continuation of whatever this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 06:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18654388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: John isn't sure where the others are. He isn't even sure where he is.





	night follows day

**Author's Note:**

> this is sad but you know I figured i might as well just publish it so here you go

The walls are glittering like stars. He closes his eyes and pretends he’s back in the ship.

 _God, look at you,_ Roger breathes into his ear, and he sighs. He can almost feel his arms around him, can almost feel the warmth of his chest pressed against his back. He opens his eyes and the walls are the cosmos outside the window in their bedroom back on the ship. _What are you thinking about, gorgeous?_

A sharp whistle snaps him out of it and his eyes snap open. He raises his pick and goes back to scraping crystals off the rocks around him.

Freddie had been taken away a while ago. He can’t remember how long. Time barely even exists down here. Freddie—no, that’s not his name. He doesn’t think of that. It’s easier not to. They’re all just numbers down here. Freddie was 4860 and he’s 4861. There are 312 people in this labor unit. Sometimes he thinks about what must’ve happened to the previous 4,549—well, 4,550 if you count 4860’s disappearance. It’s something better not thought about, so instead he just thinks of him.

It wasn’t much of a disappearance, really. A wealthy woman had visited the mines, someone he’d never seen before. She looked over all of them, dirty and shaky from the strain of raising their picks all day. She’d gestured at 4860, two of the labor guards had grabbed him by the biceps and he’d been dragged away. His pick clattered to the ground. One last look at the panic in his dark eyes was all he had left of him.

That and a song. He sings it under his breath, quietly enough that the guards won’t hear. “ _Blue spin as you go, grow the way you do_ ,” he half-mutters, and his voice is nowhere near as smooth and haunting as 4860’s used to be but it’s alright, it’s the words that he really needs, “ _blue milky water won’t you take me, we wash in the secrets you knew, blue baby take me back, lacking_ —”

“Sirius,” someone hisses.

He looks up.

“You’re from the Dog Star. Primus?”

It’s the boy beside him, and he has a frantic look in his eyes as he whispers.

4861 ducks his head, going back to work. “I’m not from Primus.”

“Where are you from?” When he doesn’t answer the boy presses on. “Lupus?”

He shakes his head.

“You’re from that system somewhere. I know that song.”

“I’m not from anywhere,” he mutters.

They work for a moment in silence. “I’m from Sirius-One. Primus,” the boy says finally.

Primus, Nova Terra, the new hope after the Old World dried up. It’s old itself now, old and grey, or that’s what he heard. That’s where—

He shakes his head. “Get back to work.”

“Where’d you learn it? That song? You have to be from Sirius someplace. You know how we are about our music.”

He must be new; surely he’s new. He doesn’t know how things work down here yet. His number is 5479— _5479_ , how long has he even been down here? Surely he would’ve noticed if he’d become the one down here the longest. He used to defer to the ones with numbers lower than him but slowly they’ve all disappeared. Or maybe quickly. Time doesn’t work down here where the sun doesn’t touch.

“That’s—that’s the melody from my town,” the boy says hesitantly. “Are you from—”

“I’m not from Sirius, so will you drop it?” he snaps.

The boy reels back, brown eyes hurt, god he has the same eyes, he has the same hair and the same sharp nose.

A guard approaches them rapidly and they both duck and focus on the stones until the man passes. At least this kid has some sense.

“Where are you from?” the boy asks. It’s the last time he’s going to speak and 4861 knows that. He can tell by the defeat in his tone, and that’s the only reason he answers.

“Scutum-Centaurus Arm,” he mutters. “Calderas-4.”

“I don’t know it,” the boy answers.

He wishes he didn’t know it, either—peaceful, full of hard workers but not too full. Quiet, really. He remembers the day he left, remembers thinking he’d be back soon. And then he’d come to Orion, come to a distant bazaar and met three boys—

 _I always wanted to see Calderas-4,_ Brian had said to him conversationally. The bridge was in nighttime mode, Freddie and Roger asleep on the bench behind them, curled around each other.

_Oh yeah? Not many people know it._

_I read about it once. They say it’s beautiful._ He’d shrugged and flipped through his navigation notes just for something to do.

_I suppose, yeah. Maybe to you inner-rim folks. It’s certainly quiet._

_Do you miss it?_

He has to think on that. _I suppose. I don’t think about it very much but yeah, I suppose in some way I do._

Brian glances at him sideways. _We can always stop by. If you’d like, anyway._

And he’d smiled at that, smiled at his thoughtfulness. _Some day, maybe. Not now. We’ve got plenty of time._

“Where’d you learn that song?” 5479 asks. “Who taught it to you?”

He doesn’t even really know how to answer that. He works in silence for a long minute while he turns it over. The ache between his shoulder blades flares as he does, ever-present these days. “Someone,” he murmurs finally.

“They must’ve loved you.”

The crystal he’s scraping at shatters under his pick as he works it a bit too roughly.

“It’s a love song in our system. It’s a song to something lost, or maybe something found. It isn’t just something people sing, you know. You should be careful who you let hear that.”

He lets his pick rest against the rocks for a moment as he breathes. He rests his head against the stone, the crystals clogging his vision again until they’re all he can see. Stars. They’re stars.

“Whoever it is must’ve loved you a lot to even let you hear it in the first place.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, and lets his eyes close. Gods, he’s tired.

“Where are they now?”

“Hey,” a woman says on the boy’s other side. “Shut up, kid. Okay? Mind your damn business.”

“What? I’m just asking a question.”

“Yeah, well, his guy got dragged off. You will be too, if you don’t keep your mouth shut and get back to work. Don’t let the guards see you chatting.”

The kid huffs. “I was only trying to be cordial.”

“Next time how about you don’t try. This isn’t the place.”

4861 looks down. His pick is almost buried in debris. The sack at his side is lighter than usual, barely half as full as it used to be by this time in their shift when he first came here. He’s getting weaker, maybe. Probably. He feels weaker.

His resolve is slipping. It’s been slipping since—

But he can’t think about that.

He shuts his eyes and lets it fade around the edges, lets it all blur together. He lets images from before float into the surface of his mind, lets his own harsh angles change back into the softer lines of youth. His hair grows longer and clean, soft against his shoulders. His skin is soft, his hands are soft. He isn’t hungry. His back doesn’t ache.

The jungle rises up around them.

And it’s them, it’s him and 48—it’s _Freddie_ , and he’s glowing in the way he used to, glowing with youth and happiness and health. His hair is long too, before it was buzzed short when they were first sent to work in the mines. His skin is dappled in the light filtering through the canopy. He’s smiling.

_Hold still and I’ll draw you._

John laughs in disbelief. He can feel the way it rises in his chest, carefree and unhindered. _Will you?_

_You’ll get a reward out of it if you behave._

_And what if I don’t?_

Freddie smiles at him knowingly. _Hold still,_ he says softly, and John listens.

The planet is beautiful. It’s everything they dreamed of. The soil is rich, terraformed long ago and then abandoned once the resources deep in the core were depleted, but life found a way in the end. The trees are thick and old. Their leaves are rubbery and waxy, the air humid and muggy, but it’s perfect. It’s gorgeous.

It had been Brian who had led them here in their never-ending quest. He isn’t sure about this planet, but it’s a good halfway point. Maybe it isn’t their land of hope, their Virida, their Terra Sperum, _musa, mihi causas memora_ like it was something freely given, the memory of a land that loved them. That memory is long gone and rests only with the naïve and those stupid enough to believe in their dreams. He knows that now, and a part of him is unerringly grateful that Brian does not.

Oh, but they travelled far, and here was their oasis finally, a beautiful place, a new frontier. Roger had breathed in deep and his eyes matched the blue of the sky. John hadn’t known that before. Roger’s eyes are the color of clear sky. He’d never seen a clear sky.

Roger had stepped off the ship, laid his feet in the grass, had _laughed_ and Brian had followed him with charts and beakers and sample boxes and a hopeful smile on his face, and it had been Freddie who’d dragged him in and kissed him hard and whispered _let’s go explore_ against his lips.

He hovers there in the memory. He doesn’t need to go further, doesn’t need to remember the moment when it all went to shit, doesn’t need to remember Brian screaming at them to _Move, come on, we’ve got company, come on!_ He doesn’t—

He doesn’t need to remember that. All he needs is their happiness and the clean air. That’s all he needs.

He’s so fucking tired.

“4860!”

That’s not his name. His eyes snap open.

There’s a guard marching toward them. The boy beside him is looking at him with worry, his head ducked, but the guard isn’t coming for him. He’s coming for John.

At first he thinks it’s because of his laziness, his weakness, but no. That’s not it. The guard barely seems to care about that. “On your feet,” he snaps.

John gets up, shakily, and that’s when he sees the Galactic Officers standing in the mouth of the tunnel.

“This the one?” the labor guard snaps.

The officer gives a short nod. He steps forward to drag John easily to the mouth of the tunnel, and John is almost thankful for that. He doubts he could make it on his own, truthfully.

He looks back once and is thrown roughly into the image however many days, weeks, months ago: Freddie being pulled away, fear in his eyes, there one second and gone the next. The boy from Sirius is looking up at him, panicked and scared, not daring to move. John blinks.

The miners are out of sight.

He’s being dragged down the tunnel toward the lift, and then they’re on it, and then they’re racing toward the surface. “Where are we going?” he rasps.

“Quiet.”

He lets his eyes drift shut.

“You’re safe now,” the guard says, a little softer.

“Safe?”

“Safe. No more work.”

He can’t decide if that sounds good or bad. He settles on good. No matter what lies ahead it’ll be better than being trapped in some underground pit digging up crystals all day. Maybe they’re sending him back to his boys, or back home.

“No, not to Calderas,” the guard says.

Oops. He must’ve let that slip. He must be worse off than he thought.

“It’s alright. We’re getting you medical attention and then we’ll take care of you. We’re going to Deneb.”

Deneb. “The capitol,” he murmurs, then frowns. Why there? Why there?

“Like I said, we’ll get you some medical attention. We know who you are. We’ll take care of you. Don’t worry. You’ll have everything you need.”

Not everything. They can’t give him everything. They can’t give him his boys, and he makes effort to keep that thought to himself. Something isn’t right here, isn’t adding up, but all of a sudden the weight of the last few _days weeks months years lifetimes_ is piling on his mind, on the back of his eyes.

They can’t want to help him. They can’t be putting him anywhere else than lockup. They know his name, know all their names. They know punks when they see them, and he knows he’s a wanted man.

None of it makes sense.

It doesn’t matter. They hold him up easily and he goes boneless with it. He can hear Freddie singing in the distance, can feel Brian’s fingers carding through his hair. _Sleep,_ Roger whispers in his ear, _we’ll be at the new planet in the morning. It’ll be a busy day. Sleep, Deaks._

“Okay,” he whispers.

He’s out before the lift even reaches the surface.

**Author's Note:**

> I have an actual plot arc planned out for exercises in free love but fam it is taking SO long to write so we have more of this instead. Let me know what you think!


End file.
